Blizzard is revamping the Shamans in World of Warcraft. They will become more important for raids – as they receive a powerful buff.
Even though the pre-patch for The War Within will be released in just a few weeks, there are still many changes and innovations in the beta of the new expansion. Recently, the overhaul of the Shamans was revealed, which also comes with a brand new buff. This replaces one of the popular totems, ensuring that the entire raid benefits from it.
What kind of buff is it? The new buff will be called “Skyfury,” which translates to “Heaven’s Wrath.” This buff gives all affected characters a 20% chance for automatic attacks to be repeated one more time.
Since many effects, such as poisons or gaining rage, are triggered by automatic attacks, this is a buff that pretty much all melee fighters will appreciate.
Additionally, the buff grants everyone a 2% bonus to mastery.
This ensures that not only melee fighters benefit, but all other classes as well.
Unlike before, the entire raid can benefit from Heaven’s Wrath, and not just the specific group where the Shaman is located.
Why is Blizzard doing this? The totem buffs of the Shamans feel a bit outdated. Specifically, the Windfury totem often caused annoying issues because only players from the same group were affected – but not the entire raid. Thus, raid leaders always had to build a “melee group” that would then be strengthened by the Shaman. If there were more melees in the raid but too few Shamans, some players found themselves left out and had to forgo the buff.
This was not only cumbersome but also frustrating for those who couldn’t perform at their full potential because there was no room for them in the melee Shaman group.
What do the changes mean? Overall, this new raid buff should ensure that Shamans are brought along to raids and groups more frequently in the future.
Particularly the 2% mastery bonus makes the raid buff quite useful for everyone. Since some specializations – such as the Shadow Priest – benefit massively from mastery, a 2% increase is likely to be significantly reflected in the damage dealt.
What do you think of the new raid buff?
In general, The War Within is doing many things right and brings numerous innovations. However, the story might be confusing for some old fans or newcomers, as many characters that have not appeared before now play important roles. We have introduced 5 of these characters here.
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